1rocketjk
I was looking through the 2022 National Jewish Book Awards lists lately, as found on the National Jewish Book Council website. (By "National," they mean "U.S.")
One of the 2022 award winners that caught my eye along these lines is An Unchosen People: Jewish Political Reckoning in Interwar Poland by Kenneth B. Moss. This book looks fascinating, and resonates with me particularly because of my recent reading of Isaac Singer's early novels, all of which take place in pre-WW2 Poland. The description of the book on the Jewish Book Council site is here:
https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/an-unchosen-people-jewish-political-recko...
All of this made me think that we might need for this group a thread about pre-Holocaust events and conditions in Europe, the state of various Jewish communities, rural and urban, and the antisemitic laws, violence or other sorts of pressure, and mention the idea on the group's Message Board. When asked by Cindy (cindydavid4) for more details about my idea, I responded,
"I would say how the people were living beforehand. . . . Shtetl life, yes, but not to the exclusion or even necessarily by way of emphasis over life in places like Warsaw or Minsk or any other city where Jews lived in numbers. Political events also, but especially having to do directly with Jewish life. So the laws in 1920s and 1930s Poland that excluded Jews from working in municipal jobs or kept Jewish writers out of the Polish writers guild. Things like that more than, say, the internal German political events that helped bring the Nazis to power.
My own personal emphasis would be any events that help minimize the idea that the Holocaust was an isolated event, rather than the culmination of thousands of years of cultural belief and governmental and church policies.
But I would not presume to (or want to) try to set boundaries over how others wanted to populate the thread with books and/or other discussion prompts."
Cindy had previously mentioned a very interesting looking blog about the author Martin Gilbert that her cousin runs. (https://www.martingilbert.com/blatt/survivors-in-their-own-right/?mc_cid=747c240...) Cindy also mentioned that she was reading Jeffrey Veidinger's book, In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust, adding, "{I}t really helps to show how the local killings during the German occupation really had history." That's pretty much precisely the sort of book I had in mind, though I'd never heard of it before.
One book on that subject I have recently read is Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History by Steven J. Zipperstein, about a famous program in what is now Belarus, where my own family is from.
Two things sparked my particular interest in this topic. One was what I considered Isabel Wilkerson's well-intentioned by highly flawed use of the Holocaust as a continuing example in her otherwise excellent and essential book about racism, Caste: the Origins of our Discontents. My uneasiness came from her presentation of the Holocaust as an isolated event rather than what I see it as, which is as a horrifically bloodthirsty and deadly spike in a long-running chronic fever of hate and fear that had been coursing through the veins of European culture for centuries. But a few months before that reading, I had been having a conversation with a friend about the events around the early days of Israel, and he stated rather flippantly the idea that Israel had been started by people who'd been "traumatized by the Holocaust," missing the fact entirely that what (in my opinion) the Holocaust survivors had really (or I guess I should say, "additionally") been traumatized by was the fact that they didn't see the Holocaust as a singular event, but a blow-up that could just as easily happen again.
My idea is that this discussion can encompass both fiction and non-fiction treatments of the topic. For example, as mentioned above, I've begun reading, two per year, through Isaac B. Singer's novels in order of their translation and publication in English. The first three are all about Jewish life in Poland before the war. They are Satan in Goray, The Family Moskat and The Magician of Lublin. The first and last of those take the reader back somewhat further in time than The Family Moskat, which covers the period the early 20th century through the first bombs falling on Warsaw in 1939. All three are excellent and all three frame Jewish life in Poland within the confines of the antisemitism constraining their existence.
The winners of the 2022 National Jewish Book Awards can be found here:
https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/awards
Note that the linked page only shows the first five winners, and the arrows to either side of those first five books let you navigate to the additional award winners. Obviously, not all of these books are Holocaust, or pre-holocaust, related, but some are.
Anyway, I was encouraged in that discussion to start such a thread, and here it is.
One of the 2022 award winners that caught my eye along these lines is An Unchosen People: Jewish Political Reckoning in Interwar Poland by Kenneth B. Moss. This book looks fascinating, and resonates with me particularly because of my recent reading of Isaac Singer's early novels, all of which take place in pre-WW2 Poland. The description of the book on the Jewish Book Council site is here:
https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/an-unchosen-people-jewish-political-recko...
All of this made me think that we might need for this group a thread about pre-Holocaust events and conditions in Europe, the state of various Jewish communities, rural and urban, and the antisemitic laws, violence or other sorts of pressure, and mention the idea on the group's Message Board. When asked by Cindy (cindydavid4) for more details about my idea, I responded,
"I would say how the people were living beforehand. . . . Shtetl life, yes, but not to the exclusion or even necessarily by way of emphasis over life in places like Warsaw or Minsk or any other city where Jews lived in numbers. Political events also, but especially having to do directly with Jewish life. So the laws in 1920s and 1930s Poland that excluded Jews from working in municipal jobs or kept Jewish writers out of the Polish writers guild. Things like that more than, say, the internal German political events that helped bring the Nazis to power.
My own personal emphasis would be any events that help minimize the idea that the Holocaust was an isolated event, rather than the culmination of thousands of years of cultural belief and governmental and church policies.
But I would not presume to (or want to) try to set boundaries over how others wanted to populate the thread with books and/or other discussion prompts."
Cindy had previously mentioned a very interesting looking blog about the author Martin Gilbert that her cousin runs. (https://www.martingilbert.com/blatt/survivors-in-their-own-right/?mc_cid=747c240...) Cindy also mentioned that she was reading Jeffrey Veidinger's book, In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust, adding, "{I}t really helps to show how the local killings during the German occupation really had history." That's pretty much precisely the sort of book I had in mind, though I'd never heard of it before.
One book on that subject I have recently read is Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History by Steven J. Zipperstein, about a famous program in what is now Belarus, where my own family is from.
Two things sparked my particular interest in this topic. One was what I considered Isabel Wilkerson's well-intentioned by highly flawed use of the Holocaust as a continuing example in her otherwise excellent and essential book about racism, Caste: the Origins of our Discontents. My uneasiness came from her presentation of the Holocaust as an isolated event rather than what I see it as, which is as a horrifically bloodthirsty and deadly spike in a long-running chronic fever of hate and fear that had been coursing through the veins of European culture for centuries. But a few months before that reading, I had been having a conversation with a friend about the events around the early days of Israel, and he stated rather flippantly the idea that Israel had been started by people who'd been "traumatized by the Holocaust," missing the fact entirely that what (in my opinion) the Holocaust survivors had really (or I guess I should say, "additionally") been traumatized by was the fact that they didn't see the Holocaust as a singular event, but a blow-up that could just as easily happen again.
My idea is that this discussion can encompass both fiction and non-fiction treatments of the topic. For example, as mentioned above, I've begun reading, two per year, through Isaac B. Singer's novels in order of their translation and publication in English. The first three are all about Jewish life in Poland before the war. They are Satan in Goray, The Family Moskat and The Magician of Lublin. The first and last of those take the reader back somewhat further in time than The Family Moskat, which covers the period the early 20th century through the first bombs falling on Warsaw in 1939. All three are excellent and all three frame Jewish life in Poland within the confines of the antisemitism constraining their existence.
The winners of the 2022 National Jewish Book Awards can be found here:
https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/awards
Note that the linked page only shows the first five winners, and the arrows to either side of those first five books let you navigate to the additional award winners. Obviously, not all of these books are Holocaust, or pre-holocaust, related, but some are.
Anyway, I was encouraged in that discussion to start such a thread, and here it is.
2rocketjk
Here's a pertinent review that I just saw on the Jewish Book Council website:
Deceit by Yuri Felsen; Bryan Karetnyk, trans.
Review by Lauren Gilbert – February 6, 2023
Though nearly completely forgotten today, Yuri Felsen (born Nikolai Freudenstein) was one of the most celebrated modernists of his day, admired by Vladimir Nabokov and lionized as “the Russian Proust.” This first English translation of Felsen’s 1930 novel, Deceit, aims to rescue him from the obscurity into which he fell shortly after his murder in Auschwitz in 1943.
Set in Paris during the interwar period, Deceit is an example of proto-autofiction, written in the form of a diary. The unnamed narrator recounts in minute detail the ups and downs of his relationship with Lyolya Heard, the object of his romantic obsession.
https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/deceit
Deceit by Yuri Felsen; Bryan Karetnyk, trans.
Review by Lauren Gilbert – February 6, 2023
Though nearly completely forgotten today, Yuri Felsen (born Nikolai Freudenstein) was one of the most celebrated modernists of his day, admired by Vladimir Nabokov and lionized as “the Russian Proust.” This first English translation of Felsen’s 1930 novel, Deceit, aims to rescue him from the obscurity into which he fell shortly after his murder in Auschwitz in 1943.
Set in Paris during the interwar period, Deceit is an example of proto-autofiction, written in the form of a diary. The unnamed narrator recounts in minute detail the ups and downs of his relationship with Lyolya Heard, the object of his romantic obsession.
https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/deceit
3cindydavid4
My eyes have been opened by reading the brothers ashkenazi The begining of the industrial revolution where germans , polish and jewish workers were weaving cloth, fast forward to early 20th century when the huge factories were making all of their lives hell, then a worker riot in 1905 when the workers were told by officials that this was all the jews fault, with the resutl being a pogrom. then the beginnings of the revolution, when unions struck and everywhere people were talking about socialism. Then as people lost hope, again blamed the jews. ,and you can feel what this hatred is leading to. Im now towards the end just before the war (the book was published 1936) and reading is rough goining, Ill finish it, I want to know what happens to the brothers, make me realize how it started back in those early days. excellent powerful read.
btw one of the brothers becomes extremely wealthy in Poland but after the invasoin goes to petersburg, and decides to bring literally everything fron his factories in Lodz to there. In the book he makes it happen, but I really cant imagine it. Any idea if something like this happened in real life?
btw one of the brothers becomes extremely wealthy in Poland but after the invasoin goes to petersburg, and decides to bring literally everything fron his factories in Lodz to there. In the book he makes it happen, but I really cant imagine it. Any idea if something like this happened in real life?
4cindydavid4
Here is a quote from Jeffrey Veidlinger's book on the pogroms in Ukraine after the First World War that I found particularly helpful in understanding the situation for Jews in Ukraine.
In the Midst of Civilized Europe,The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust
In the Midst of Civilized Europe,The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust
